Why is glycerol used instead of water in the bath used to heat the reaction mixture?


From the log of EXP016: Glycerol bath was placed on hot plate (setting 3.5).

Glycerol is used in the bath to heat the phosphoric acid solution of adrenaline to a temperature of 120 C. Water would boil off at 100 C. Glycerol boils much higher at 290 C because has three hydroxyl groups that can form extensive networks of hydrogen bonds. We have seen in lecture 7 that more hydrogen bonding increases the strength of the interaction between molecules and thus raises the boiling point.

800px-Glycerine_chemical_structure.png 800px-Glycerol-3D-vdW.png
moz-screenshot.jpgmoz-screenshot-1.jpg

FULL MARKS.